Before people read this tutorial I want to get a few things strait. First and for most this tutorial is far from original. It is in fact taken from many different articles and other known information from around the net and is far from perfect. I my self can take no credit but do like everyone else have an opinion.

The most important point and I stress this with big bold letters.

*****WHEN YOU USE BITTORENT TO DOWNLOAD AND SHARE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL YOU CAN NEVER BE 100% SAFE*****

If you want to be 100% protected than stop using it.

You may even use many of these programs or techniques and still be sent a ugly little letter from your ISP or even be sued(though incredibly unlikely)

when you consider more people use P2P than all the Americans who voted in our last election it becomes even more unlikely. Whats the total? Well according to RIAA watch 17,587 individuals have been sued, and that’s not including letters from your ISP or MPAA lawsuits. But with as many as 20 million P2P users including bittorrent and other file sharing networks....well you can do the math, my head hurts and I failed math.

Even with all that said it is still very important to keep your self as safe as you can.

Of course if you live in Sweden or sea island you probably only use a firewall but for those that live with a kind of government such as in England or the U.S this maybe worth a read.

*****Please remember! This maybe very basic to some and not to others******

Firewalls:

It may seem silly to mention but many people don’t realize how important it is to have a good firewall when using Bittorent or any P2P program for that matter. After all a firewalls main purpose is to filter all the bad traffic that try to connect to your PC.

With a good firewall you can tweak it to your internet habits and likings including blocking IP ranges, specific web sites, blocking code or adds.

There are so many good firewalls and a lot off bad ones too but I would recommend and use
Zonealarm.

Here is a screen shot of Zonealarm manually blocking IP’s
Go to >Firewall>Zones>Add>Host/site

Blocklists::

While blocking IP ranges can take time there are programs that do this automatically by getting Ranges from an online database. The most popular is PeerGuardian once downloaded it blocks IP(s) associated to what it designates as a bad IP or ranges. This could include Sony, Warner music or the RIAA. I find some of the IP(s) that connect to my computer are harmless including many of the universities and others. But it is handy as you can choose what lists you want depending on how unsafe you feel. It also has a HTTP option which blocks some sites that are known for viruses or spyware.

I personally use ProtoWall it also blocks IP’s and uses a program called BLOCKLIST MANAGER to load IP(s). Protowall is a bit more advanced as far as installing but the tutorial on their page will help you get started.

Another way is actually using block lists in your torrent client. Azereus already has an add-on called Safepeer
which once installed, can automatically update and in my opinion is very hassle free.

If you use uTorrent it can be a little more of a hassle but I will go threw it step by step to help everyone understand it a little better.

First things first you need to understand that uTorrent should already have a file called ipfilter.dat if not in the uTorrent folder you need to copy and rename the rss file or any other file to ipfilter!

To locate it you need to go to Start>control panel>tools>folder options>view and Select "Show all hidden files and folders"

Install and start, then go to Tools>options>app locations then select IPfilter (emule/donk)
Then browse, go to documents and settings>username>application data>uTorrent>ipfilter

once assigned make sure you tell block list manager what lists to download in the sources tab under tools.
Once done hit process. After all the ip’s have been downloaded go to Export>p2p apps>to emule.

The last step is to go to uTorrent options>Preferences>advanced then scroll down to ipfilter.dat and set value to true!

Please note: you may want to unselect show hidden files and folders when done.

DHT When used in public bittorrent sites, having DHT enabled in your torrent client can be a good thing. What does this mean? Well by having DHT enabled you are able to connect to more nodes (peers) or putting it in layman’s terms people.

For example, say you download something from ThePirateBay! If the torrent is popular odds are that the same torrent is not only at the pirate bay but at Mininova, ISOhunt or any other public tracker. By having DHT enabled you are able to connect to more peers from almost any public tracker with that file. That means faster downloading!

An example where safety might play a role is when you download from a Private tracker, where only members are able to download and upload content to each other…

If you have DHT enabled say on Torrentleech which is a private tracker and ThePirateBay has that same file. You may be sharing a torrent to hundreds of others that are not part of the private community by letting other IP’s connect to the Swarm. You can see how this might be upsetting for people working hard and sharing for a ratio. If people are able to connect to your swarm then they are able to see your IP and anyone else downloading. Odds are you don’t want some Joe shmo that’s sole purpose is to track you, to see that kind of information.

It’s also a good Idea when disabling DHT to disable peer exchange, which is in the same box as the DHT option:

VPN tunnels and other anonymous downloading:

There are known ways most of which cost money that make you completely anonymous. Though I no very little about this I will give you some helpful links.

The VPNTunnel service works by disguising your Internet traffic take a look:

BTGuard is a proxy service that reroutes your BitTorrent downloads thru there servers:http://btguard.com/

You can also use TOR by running Bittorent threw its proxy servers. I highly discourage this! not only will it slow you down to a crawl but it will also slow down the whole network. If you still want to use it you can do your own googling.

There are other ways but many of them, some frankly are not worth it and are very time consuming including i2p.

Scams:

There are many sites which it sole purpose is to track you. The most popular was Miivi which came about from a well known and long gone anti P2P Company MediaDefender.

Just ask in the FST forums before you sign up to see if it is legit!
And remember “never pay money for file sharing”

I hope you enjoyed reading my tutorial and if you have any comments or anything to add please let me know.

I’m sure there are more things I could add but I’m off to bed.

Cheers!

Edit: I almost forgot to give credit where credit is due! even though most of this is not taken verbatim from any place I got much of this information or knowledge from this forum, private site forums including torrentleech and ScT. also I did get some of the statistics from slyck and torrent freak which are both really good news sites.
I'm sure I'm missing a site or two but anyhow...enjoy

That is true, blocklists do nothing. Law and Anti-Piracy firms often use residential connections to monitor swarms, since this will just blend in and look like a normal user. These IPs will most likely never be discovered and never added to the blocklist. However, if they are found, they can easily get more IPs.. it's not hard.